Moscow asks Kiev to transfer six citizens to Russian prisons
The Russian Ministry of Justice appealed to Kiev to consider the transfer of six Russians prisoners. The Ukrainian Ministry of Justice has not responded to Moscow's request yet.
The Russian Ministry of Justice has received letters from six Russian citizens who are sentenced to imprisonment in Ukraine, but want to serve their sentences at home. This was stated in response to the request of the RBC agency.
After receiving the letters, Russian officials have appealed to the Ukrainian Ministry of Justice. "The necessary documents in relation to such persons were sent to the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine. As of 12.04.2016 there is no answer yet," the Ministry specified in a message.
The Ministry of Justice did not provide the names of the applicants or articles on the basis of which they were convicted.
The representative of the press-service of the Russian Embassy in Ukraine was unable to tell RBC how many Russian citizens are in Ukrainian prisons. He noted that Kiev doesn't always provide diplomats with such information, though it should.
It's extremely difficult to know the exact number of convicted Russians because nobody was conducting a systematic study of the problem at a global level in Russia or in Ukraine, Oleg Bondarenko, a Russian political scientist and the Director of Strategic Communications Agency says. Among the convicts there are Russian citizens who went to the south-east of Ukraine as volunteers and were captured there, Bondarenko says.
On March 11, the press-service of the Russian Ministry of Justice told TASS that the ministries of the two countries are already considering the transfer of 13 Russian citizens convicted by the courts of Ukraine. Eight Russian citizens have been convicted since the beginning of the Ukrainian anti-terrorist operation in the south-east of the country, the Chairman of the Security Service of Ukraine, Vasyl Hrytsak, said in April.
In January, the court of Sloviansk in the Donetsk region convicted a Russian citizen to eight years of prison on terrorism charges. That same month, the Court of Popasna in the Luhansk region found a Russian citizen guilty of being involved in the armed conflict in the south-east of Ukraine on the side of the militants and sentenced him to 13 years in prison. The names of the two were not disclosed.
One of the names of the convicted was publicized by the Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, last December. She said that nothing is known about the whereabouts of Vladimir Bezobrazov, who was convicted for alleged infringement on the territorial integrity of Ukraine and sentenced to three years in prison.
The Russian and Ukrainian Codes of Criminal Procedure provide a similar procedure of transfer of the convicted. Having received instructions from the Justice Ministry, the Penitentiary Service should verify the presence or absence of grounds for preventing the transfer. The transfer could be prevented if, for example, the convicted person could be charged on the basis of additional articles, not specified in the request. Also, if the receiving party announces its intention to release the convicted, it will become a reason to refuse extradition. The final decision on extradition will be made by the court.
On April 8, the Russian Ministry of Justice announced that it had instructed the Federal Penitentiary Service to prepare the documents for the transfer of four Ukrainian convicts. Among them is Director Oleg Sentsov and activists Oleksandr Kolchenko and Gennady Afanasiev, who were convicted during the so-called case of Crimean terrorists, as well as Yuri Soloshenko, who was sentenced to six years in a penal colony for espionage. The order was given in connection with the appeal of the Ukrainian Ministry of Justice which was made on March 10, the Russian Ministry explained.